8

Lipljan (Lipjan)
Municipality

The
municipality of Lipljan (Lipjan) is situated in central Kosovo, with the
main Pristina-Skopje highway passing close to its municipal capital, Lipljan
town. Unlike the neighboring municipalities of Glogovac and Stimlje, Lipljan
was not a focus of KLA activity or counter-insurgency by Serbian security
forces during 1998, perhaps as a result of its ethnically-mixed population.
This included large numbers of Serbs and a significant Roma and ethnic
Croat population. Almost immediately after NATO airstrikes began, however,
Serbian military and police began to enter and attack ethnic Albanian villages,
forcing their inhabitants to flee to neighboring areas. In addition to
large-scale displacement, there was arson and looting of Albanian homes
and businesses in the municipality. Although Lipljan did not experience
the level of killings suffered in Glogovac or Suva Reka, there were large-scale
killings in three villages-Slovinje, Malo Ribare and Mali Alas-in mid-April.
In Slovinje, for example, at least thirty-five people were killed on April
15 and 16. Finally, over the last week of April and first week of May 1999,
thousands of Lipljan-area residents were forced to board trains and were
expelled into Macedonia while others were sent towards Albania.

Although Lipljan municipality was not a center of
KLA activity, it was the focus on considerable attention from Serbian security
forces between March and June 1999. The testimony of the more than thirty
witnesses from the area interviewed by Human Rights Watch indicates a pattern
of attacks against many villages even while certain villages were spared
direct assault. The objective of the attacks seems to have been to concentrate
the population within a small area, prior to their subsequent expulsion
from Kosovo. There were several waves of offensives, first immediately
following NATO airstrikes at the end of March. Subsequent offensives in
April aimed at driving away villagers who tried to return home, while massacres
in several villages served to terrorize many of the municipality's inhabitants
into fleeing to Macedonia.

Albanian residents in the town of Lipljan were forced
out of their homes within days of the start of NATO airstrikes through
the burning of Albanian homes and house to house searches by Serbian police,
and indirectly, out of fear at the large concentration of Serbian security
forces in the town following the departure of the OSCE Kosovo Verification
Mission. A.I., a thirty-three-year-old Lipljan resident, described the
climate of fear that forced him and his family to leave:

I was living in the center [of the town] in a building.
On March 23, more than one hundred police were stationed at the administrative
office for agriculture, four meters away from our [apartment] building.
On Wednesday March 24 we felt fear when we saw a lot of movement of police
and military in front of the building. At around 3:00 p.m. we were forced
[by fear] to take our children and go to my nephew's house in the suburbs
about 300 meters away from the town. We stayed two days in that house.
On March 28 at around 9 p.m. the shooting and burning of Albanian homes
in the town began. The burning houses were getting closer and closer to
us. At around 10:30 p.m. we saw seven police officers from the window [of
the house] about five meters away. Fortunately . . . they went to a neighbor's
house which was empty. In the space of three minutes, all seventeen of
us in the house left. We crossed through muddy fields to a village two
kilometers _away with our children in our arms. We arrived in Bandulic
village at around 1:00 a.m.1

A.I. and his family left Bandulic (Banulle) around
April 8 for Lugadzija (Llugagji), a village several kilometers farther
south which served as a war-time refuge for many displaced families from
the municipality. They spent several weeks there before returning to Lipljan
on April 24. On their return to Lipljan, the family spent another week
in A.I.'s nephew's house in the suburbs before fleeing to Macedonia. Most
Bandulic residents fled to Macedonia in the last week of April, following
an ultimatum from the police for the villagers "to hand over all their
weapons" and several bouts of arson and robbery by police and paramilitaries.2
Lipljan residents interviewed by the OSCE describe a similar pattern of
police activity and arson in the town in late March, as well as direct
expulsions of Albanian residents.3

Villages east of Lipljan were targeted in operations
staged from Babus, a Serb village in the northernmost part of Urosevac
municipality. Neighboring Muhadzer Babus (Babush i Muhaxhere), a predominantly
ethnic Albanian village in southern Lipljan, was attacked with gunfire
and grenades by Serbian forces the same evening that NATO airstrikes began,
causing the villagers to flee. Several weeks later, after some inhabitants
had returned, the village was attacked again with gunfire. Although residents
initially fled to nearby Gornje Gadimlje (Gadime e Eperme) which had itself
been attacked within days of the start of airstrikes, the inhabitants of
Muhadzer Babus eventually took refuge in the village of Lugadzija, which
in contrast with most of the surrounding villages was largely left undisturbed.4
S.S., a thirty-six-year-old man from the village, explained to Human Rights
Watch what he had experienced:

On the first day of airstrikes we were very pleased,
but the airstrikes began at 8:00 p.m. in our village and at midnight the
first grenades fell on our village from Srpksi Babus. It's two kilometers
away. The inhabitants are all Serbs-they were our neighbors. . . . It wasn't
until the morning when we saw the craters [blast damage] that we realized
that the grenades had come from Babus. Those of us who had small children
took them to other villages. I took mine to Gadimlje. It was the second
day of airstrikes [March 25]. . . . About ten days or two weeks after the
NATO bombing [commenced] when we went back to our houses suddenly a column
of between ten and thirteen tanks entered [Muhadzer Babus] without warning.
They were shooting with automatic rifles and anti-aircraft weapons. We
had five minutes to leave the village. We couldn't take any clothes. I
couldn't take my passport. Then we went to Lugadzija.5

On April 26, after learning of mass killings in
the villages of Slovinje, Malo Ribare, and Mali Alas (see below), S.S.
decided to take his family to Macedonia. He explained his decision: "We
were not frightened by the massacre in Slovinje. . . . but when it happened
in [Malo] Ribare and [Mali] Alas we were afraid. We were unarmed and the
children were very afraid so we had no choice but to leave."6

The village of Donje Gadimlje (Gadime e Ulet) was
shelled from Babus within days of the start of NATO strikes. A witness
from Donje Gadimlje interviewed by Human Rights Watch described the arrival
of residents from Crnilo (Cernille), a village in northern Urosevac close
to Muhadzer Babus, "five or six days after NATO started bombing."7 He explained
that "we couldn't sleep at all at night, because once NATO bombardments
stopped, they [Serbian forces] would shell our village." Several days later
(around April 1), Serbian forces entered Donje Gadimlje with tanks at around
noon, causing the villagers to flee to a nearby river. After reassurances
that the forces were just there to find shelter from NATO bombing, some
residents returned the same day, only to flee again at around 5:00 p.m.
after the arrival of the Serbian army with five tanks, which according
to two witnesses, were shooting in the air.8 Some villagers fled to Gornje
Gadimlje to the east, some to Smolusa in the north and others to Glogovce,
a village close to Lipljan. Although nearby Gornje Gadimlje was also attacked
in late March, causing some of its residents to flee to Smolusa, many of
the villagers either remained or returned, since residents from Muhadzer
Babus and Donje Gadimlje both report taking shelter there in mid-April,
together with large numbers of displaced persons from other villages.9
On April 16 or 17, however, Serbian police and paramilitaries entered Gornje
Gadimlje at around 1:30 p.m. and ordered everyone in the village to leave
for Albania within two hours.10

Some villagers were on the move for most of April.
M.L., a thirty-six-year-old man from Donje Gadimlje described his ordeal:

It was nine days after the bombing started that
we had to leave the first time [approximately April 2]. The military came
at around 2:00 p.m. and did a patrol with tanks and then left. Two hours
they returned and forced us out. Nobody was allowed to take cars or tractors.
. . . We were obliged to go to Smolusa. After one week they came to Smolusa
at 6:00 a.m.-we heard the shooting. It was the [same] military who were
in Gadimlje. First they said no one is going to touch you. Then they came
back after two or three hours and said "it's not safe for you here anymore.
You have to leave Smolusa." So we went back to Gadimlje at 3:00 p.m., but
not back to our houses. They had burned about half of the village. We stayed
for twenty-four hours then the military came again and said "between 1:00
p.m. and 3:00 p.m. everyone has to leave, including Gornje Gadimlje." So
we left and went to Lugadzija. We stayed only two days there because it
was overcrowded. Then we went back to Smolusa. We stayed in Smolusa one
week and then went back to Gadimlje after a villager was told by a police
commander that it was safe to go back. But when we went back the shooting
continued all night long and three houses were burned so we left for Macedonia
after two nights. 11

The villages of Marevce and Glavica were targeted
several weeks later. According to S.S., the tanks located in Muhadzer Babus
relocated to the villages of Glavica and Marevce at around 4:30 a.m. a
week after they had entered. S.S. explained that he knew this because the
road from Muhadzer Babus to Glavica passes through Lugadzija and he had
heard the tanks.12 This account is consistent with the testimony of Q.F.,
a woman from Marevce, who told Human Rights Watch that the village was
attacked early on the morning of April 15, exactly three weeks after the
inhabitants of Muhadzer Babus had initially fled their village. Q.F. described
the attack:

The Serb offensive came early in the morning before
sunrise. We heard the noise of tanks from Babus village. When they entered
the side of our village we could hear the shooting. The noise and fear
woke us up and we went into the yard. When they were shooting we lay down
on the ground. No one was hit. There were about ten of us. Bullets were
going over our heads. [There were] a lot of tanks, armored personnel carriers,
and civilian cars. Afterwards, ground troops came down from the upper part
of the village. They went to Upper Glavica and our neighborhood and gave
an order to leave the houses. After that the situation became calmer. [The
villagers from] Glavica and Marevce ran away but our part of the village
stayed until the afternoon at around 3:00 p.m. After that a tank and armored
car came and started to burn houses in Glavica village. After they burned
the houses in Glavica, they burned houses in the upper part of Marevce.
After that we left and went to Lugadzija.13

Q.F., who was pregnant, decided to travel to Macedonia
soon after because of "fear that something might happen again."14

On the same day that Marevce and Glavica were attacked,
Serbian police and paramilitaries entered the village of Slovinje, executed
eighteen of its Albanian inhabitants, and ordered the remainder to go to
nearby Smolusa (see below). The following day, April 16, paramilitaries
surrounded a large number of residents taking shelter in the hills close
to the village and separated the men from the women. Fifteen men were then
shot dead and a woman was burned to death on a tractor by the paramilitaries,
according to witnesses. Some residents fled to Macedonia at the beginning
of May, although many took shelter in neighboring villages or hid in the
hills. Together with the villages of Malo Ribare and Mali Alas (see below),
Slovinje endured the worst wartime abuses in the entire municipality.

The villages of Toplicane (Toplican) and Glogovce
south of Lipljan were not attacked directly, but were frequently visited
by Serbian security forces in March and April, creating a climate of fear
and uncertainty that led many residents to flee to Macedonia. Both villages
suffered widespread arson as well as robbery and extortion by police and
paramilitaries. According to F.P., the intimidation in Toplicane began
soon after the start of NATO airstrikes: "First they burned three houses
where the OSCE had been staying. This was about four days after the NATO
airstrikes started. Around one week after the strikes, they started to
rob houses."15 Finally, F.P. took his family to Macedonia by train on April
22, "because of fear and because of our children."

In Glogovce (Gllogoc), the house burning and looting
were accompanied by threats and extortion. In early April, Glogovce residents
were forced to leave their houses for an hour and half, while police looted
and burned them. According to M.L., a twenty-five-year old man from the
village: "The police entered Bandulic. After that they came to our village.
It was around three weeks ago [approximately April 6]. We had to leave
our houses and go one hundred meters away just for somebody not to be killed."16
When M.L. and the other villagers returned home they found that the police
"had burned twenty-five houses and stolen money and anything else they
could find." The family of forty-year-old A.A, suffered escalating violence
that culminated in his daughter's kidnap for ransom:

The day that they burned our houses was Saturday.
Six days later they came and took my car. They caught my daughter three
days before we left-Friday or Saturday. We were inside around 9:00 a.m.
They caught my child outside playing. . . . They had a white van. They
were Serb civilians, always armed. . . . They said "give us money or we'll
kill the child." I gave them a thousand Deutsche Marks and a gold necklace.
They released her half an hour later and left. One hour later regular police
came. I told them what happened. They knew who they were but pretended
to ask for a description of the _car etc.17

A.A. and his family left Glogovce for Macedonia
on Monday, April 26. When asked why he left, he explained: "It was a very
big panic. If you stayed any longer it might be too late."18 According
to witness statements obtained by the OSCE in Macedonia, many Glogovce
residents had reached the same conclusion by the end of April.19

Serbian security forces launched a series of offensives
against the villages west of Lipljan on April 18. Bujance, a village southwest
of Lipljan close to the Lipljan-Stimlje road, was attacked with mortars
or grenades early on the morning of April 18 according to B.B, a thirty-three-year-old
resident of the village interviewed by Human Rights Watch.20 A witness
from the nearby village of Toplicane said that he saw grenades being fired
on Bujance at around 6 a.m. from neighboring Staro Gracko, a predominantly
Serbian village to the north of Bujance.21 As a result of the attack, the
younger inhabitants of Bujance fled to the hills near to the village of
Varigovce (Varigove), although some elderly residents remained in the center
of the village. Bujance also suffered looting and arson during the offensive,
according to B.B. and witnesses interviewed by the OSCE.22 The nearby village
of Krajiste (Krajishte) was also targeted on April 18, according to a thirty-five-year-old
woman from the village: "on Sunday, our village was attacked at 6:00 a.m.
by three tanks. All the village left immediately."23 According to the witness,
three villagers were killed on the day of the attack, including a middle-aged
woman, a teenage boy, and twenty-year-old woman.24 After spending five
days in the hills close to the village of Varigovce, the villager returned
to Krajishte after Serbs from the village told them it was safe to return.
The decision of most of the villagers to flee to Macedonia several days
later seems to have been prompted more by fear that Serbian forces would
return than by any specific incident.

The villages of Malo Ribare and Mali Alas were attacked
on April 18 and 19. The villages, which lie approximately three kilometers
apart, are close to the village of Novo Rujce (Rufc i Ri), which although
its residents remained, was spared the same violence as its close neighbors.
Nevertheless, the proximity of Novo Rujce to the two villages left its
inhabitants in no doubt as to what was happening nearby. Y.S., a twenty-eight-year-old
man from Novo Rujce described his experiences on April 18:

I was at home in Novo Rujce with my family when
the incidents happened in [Malo] Ribare and [Mali] Alas. It was Sunday
when the massacre happened in [Malo] Ribare. We heard the first shots at
6:15 am. At 7:00 a.m., smoke was rising from the first houses. . . . then
the women began screaming. We were forced to leave our house . . . Then
us men went there [Malo Ribare] to try and help them at around 8:00 or
9:00 a.m. We went around the village. . . . We found some wounded people.
There were four of them-an old man, an old woman, and two young men (around
twenty-five-years-old). So we tried to help them. After an hour the lady
died. . . . We couldn't see anyone else.25

Despite assurances from his Serb neighbors that
the attack on Malo Ribare would not be repeated in Novo Rujce, house-to-house
visits from paramilitaries demanding money and the burning of a house in
nearby Mali Alas convinced Y.S. to leave. He took his family to Velika
Dobranja (Dobraje e Madhe) for one week. Y.S. tried to return to Novo Rujce
but was ordered out by paramilitaries after two nights, forcing him to
flee to Lugadzija before eventually being forced to board a train to Macedonia
on May 4.

The fears generated by the attack on Malo Ribare
for Y.S. and his family proved to be well-founded. Early on April 18, Serbian
forces, including tanks, police, and paramilitaries entered the village.
According to multiple eyewitnesses, the paramilitaries then went on a rampage
of murder that left between twenty-four and twenty-seven dead, including
women, children and the elderly.26 J.K., a forty-year-old resident of Malo
Ribare described what he witnessed:

The massacre happened on Sunday April 18 at 6:00
a.m. Four different kinds of paramilitaries arrived with tanks. They executed
whoever they saw in the streets from seven [years old] to eighty-seven
[years old]. . . . They didn't choose by sex or age. Most of the people
they killed were killed by a gun shot in the neck, heart, or forehead.
They burned nineteen houses and stayed two days. . . . They came without
warning. . . . A force of about seventy entered the village with a few
tanks and APCs. There was a tank at the start [of the convoy] with a heavy
gun, after that two APCs and after them a truck loaded with paramilitaries
who got off the truck and spread around the village. . . . As soon as the
forces entered and the shooting started, people began running away. I was
going around knocking on doors telling people to get out. In half an hour
the whole village was empty. . . . I saw everything. I saw one person shot
in the neck. I saw another person shot in the heart. A woman with _me was
shot from behind. I saw almost all the people being shot apart from four.
. . .27

J.K. named eighteen persons from the village who
were executed, including a seven-year-old girl and fourteen-year-old boy,
as well as six displaced persons from the village of Vrsevce (Vershec)
in the western part of Lipljan municipality. J.K. described paramilitaries
wearing "various hats and uniforms," including Chetnik hats, bobble hats,
red bandanas, as well as green camouflage uniforms without insignia."28
J.K. returned to the village one week later, but found the "village was
burned and demolished." He fled to Macedonia soon after.

The neighboring village of Mali Alas was attacked
the following day. On the morning of April 19, Serbian paramilitaries entered
the village and separated men from women. The paramilitaries demanded money
from and then executed at least twenty men. One witness interviewed by
Deutsche Presse Agenteur said he was among thirteen men lined up against
the wall of a house and shot.29 While he and another man escaped by feigning
death, eleven men were killed. Another nine men from the village were also
shot the same day, according to this witness. Witnesses interviewed by
the OSCE (who may include the same man) describe the same event, including
the shooting of the eleven in identical terms; they also provide additional
information about the other killings.30 Although most of the details are
common to all accounts, some witnesses claimed twenty were executed and
others twenty-one.31 An explanation for the disparity may lie in the statement
of an elderly woman from Suvi Do (Suhodoll) village who was interviewed
by the Boston Globe
in June 1999.32 The woman, who was present in the village at the time of
the killings, said that Serbian forces had demanded that a Roma man from
the village help to bury the bodies of the dead, a detail echoed in other
witness statements, and stated that after the Roma man had refused to do
so, he was shot dead. Most accounts suggest that the bodies of the victims
were initially buried in a single grave, but were reinterred sometime in
early May into the individual graves that postwar visitors to the village
observed, presumably in an attempt to conceal the nature of the deaths.

Slovinje (Sllovi)

Some of the
worst atrocities in Lipljan municipality occurred in the village of Slovinje.
Slovinje, which lies approximately eight kilometers east of Lipljan was
a mixed village prior to the war, comprising around 500 Albanian and sixty
Serb homes. Relations between the Albanian and Serb villagers were reportedly
good prior to March 1999. The villagers do not appear to have been involved
in the KLA and, unusually for Kosovo, many of the Serb villagers spoke
Albanian in addition to Serbian. The violence that occurred on several
days in April shattered that community: at least thirty-five Albanian villagers
were executed on April 15 and 16. The survivors fled to neighboring villages,
and many continued on to Macedonia. As the war neared its end in early
June, two elderly brothers who had returned early were detained and beaten.
One died from his injuries. Today Slovinje is a community in tatters: almost
every Albanian family has had one or more relatives killed, all of the
Serb and most of the Roma population have fled the village, dozens of Albanian
and Serb homes have been burned to ground and the Orthodox church lies
in ruins.

Tensions in Slovinje were raised following the departure
of the OSCE KVM on March 20 and the start of NATO airstrikes four days
later, with Albanians from the village particularly concerned about deteriorating
security elsewhere in Kosovo. Those concerns were brought home on April
14, 1999. According to F.B, a thirty-eight-year-old Albanian man from the
village, an armored personnel carrier entered the village at around 4:30
p.m. and left without incident.33 Another villager, F.G., told Human Rights
Watch that he observed a Serb villager from Slovinje in a military vehicle
the same evening.34 Both men stated that Serb villagers had advised their
Albanian neighbors and the local Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) office
on the evening of April 14 that tanks were going to be brought into the
village the following day, but that "there would be no consequences," since
the tanks were simply being moved to evade NATO bombers.35

At around 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. on April 15, six tanks
entered Slovinje. According to witnesses, the forces with them were a combination
of police, military, and paramilitaries, some of them wearing masks. Villagers
allege that some of the paramilitaries were residents of Slovinje.36 Aside
from reports that soldiers or paramilitaries painted the four C's (a Serbian
symbol of four Cyrillic letter S's in the shape of a cross) on doors and
windows during the morning, the village was quiet until around 1:30 p.m.,
when multiple witnesses report hearing gunshots and seeing smoke and flames
from burning houses in the north side of the village (closer to the road
from Lipljan). Soon after, the village suffered its first victims: Fatushe
Dubova, a nineteen-year-old woman, was shot in the yard of her house, possibly
by a sniper. According to several witnesses, Hedije Krasniqi, a fifty-two-year-old
woman, was shot at close range in the street outside her house around 2:00
p.m. Next to die were the men of the Gashi family, whose family compound
was close to the entrance of the village, across from the school. Z.G.,
a female relative who was present in the Gashi compound at the time, described
seeing "forces from Gusterica and Dobratin villages in military uniform"
as well as persons wearing "masks and police uniforms." She explained to
Human Rights Watch how she witnessed the execution of her male relatives:

We were all inside when the Serbs came. They were
wearing masks and police uniforms. They knocked on the door and came inside
the house. It was around 2:00 p.m. They told us to get out of the house
because they were going to burn it. When we left the house, they took the
men among us, and told us [women and children] to go to Smolusa. My husband
didn't want to leave . . . but they even took him. . . . Then a man said
"should I burn the house or should I kill them?" Another replied "better
kill them and then take care of the house.". . . . All of the us started
to scream "don't do that," but they didn't listen. Only one person fired.
He was given a hand signal. I didn't recognize him. He was thin, had red
hair and red beard. He was wearing a police uniform, and was in his late
twenties or early thirties.37

According to Z.G., five male members of the Gashi
family were executed in the yard: sixty-three-year-old Murat; forty-year-old
Enver, and thirty-four-year-old Omer, his two sons; twenty-year-old Bekim
Haziri, his grandson, and sixteen-year-old-old Arben, Enver's son. Z.G.
alleges that several Serb residents of Slovinje were involved in the murder
of her relatives (see below). On or around the same time, Rifat Gashi and
his cousin Milaim were shot dead by a sniper. Three witnesses told Human
Rights Watch that forty-six-year-old Rifat Gashi and twenty-two-year-old
Milaim were killed by a sniper in the yard of their house on the afternoon
of April 15.38 Three girls from the family were also wounded in attack.
Two of the witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch had helped bury
the two cousins in temporary graves.

In the meantime, the Albanian residents were being
ordered to leave the village and go to nearby Smolusa by Serbian police
and paramilitaries. According to I.N., a sixty-year-old man, "We heard
rifle shots outside on the other side of the village. We went outside the
house and a Serbian officer gave a `thumbs up' indicating that we had to
leave. I asked him which way to go and he told us to go to Smolusa. He
was wearing a green uniform, not camouflage, like a soldier."39 Several
elderly men refused to leave their homes. Fifty-nine-year-old Adem Bytyqi,
remained in his home on April 15 and was found dead in a field by his brother
five days later. Avjaz Gashi, a sixty-two-year-old man also refused to
leave and was subsequently found shot in the yard of his house.

Some residents had already decided to leave once
the shooting began. Most were able to flee, but some were executed as they
tried to leave. One witness, M.B., saw Gafur Hyseni pulled off his tractor
by police and shot.40 Another witness from Gadimlje told Human Rights Watch
how paramilitaries took his nephew Faik Krasniqi off his tractor and shot
him, in front of his children.41 A third witness, F.G., saw both bodies.
Ramadan Kryeziu, a twenty-nine-year-old man, was stopped by the police
as he drove out of the village and then allowed to proceed. Kryeziu was
later found dead, according to several witnesses, including his father.42
Three elderly villagers were also found dead near to their home. The bodies
of seventy-three-year-old Mehmet Sopa, eighty-seven-year-old Shehide Sopa,
and sixty-four-year-old Qamille Sopa were found with knife wounds in a
horse stable. Relatives found blood in the yard of their house. In all,
eighteen residents of Slovinje were killed on April 15. Latife Kryeziu,
a forty-seven-year-old woman who was wounded on April 15, died several
days later in Smolusa.

While part of the village went southwest to Smolusa,
others, including many of the men, fled east toward the village of Zhegovac
(Zhegofc) to a place in the hills called "the Dell of Deme" (Lugu i Demas).
The dell consists of a large field surrounded by woods connected to a smaller
field on higher ground. The villagers spent the night in the dell, sleeping
on open ground in the rain. According to one villager, "that night we began
to talk about who was dead and who was missing."43 People from other villages
were also sheltering nearby. One witness estimates that there were around
800 people in the dell on the morning of April 16. The villagers spent
the morning building temporary shelters and organizing food supplies and
vehicles. At around 2:00 p.m., Serbian paramilitaries appeared at the top
of the dell. S.B., a sixty-two-year-old man from the village told Human
Rights Watch:

At 2:00 p.m. they came from the higher part of the
hill and started to force us [down the hill]. The woods were full of soldiers
and paramilitaries. Ten of them came closer to us and began to shoot. .
. . They told us all to move down [the hill]. One of them with a gun told
us to take out all the money, identification papers and gold that we had.
Another one started to search us to see if we kept anything. . . . They
separated thirteen people, made them put their hands up. . . . One kicked
me in the shoulder and I fell down. They beat the younger [men] one by
one with fists and the butts of their guns. . . . Then they ordered us
to separate from the women and children. The women and children were ordered
down to the field [below]. They ordered us men to go to another side. They
told us to go up into the woods, all the time saying "you were asking for
NATO, now let NATO come and help you."44

F.B, a twenty-nine-year-old male relative of S.B.,
was also present. He told Human Rights Watch:

The shooting was very intense and very close to
us. At around 2:00 p.m. Serbian forces entered the field from two sides-above
and below. That's when we saw them for the first time. . . . .In a panic,
we put up our hands to surrender. They began to tell us to get together.
. . . They moved us to the lower part of the field. As they were moving
us, one person was killed-a man who didn't want to leave his sick wife.
My nineteen-year-old nephew was wounded because the young people were moving
around a lot, trying to hide. We were all in the lower part of the field.
Five armed Serbs were standing in front of us with dark military uniforms.
They were all between thirty and forty years old. One who spoke to us in
Albanian had a black mask on his face. Most of the Serbian forces were
300 meters lower down in another field.45

F.G. confirmed the killing of Jonuz Pacolli, the
man with the sick wife.46 According to F.G., "the biggest abuses began"
after Jonuz Pacolli was executed 47 Each of the witnesses described the
confiscation of documents and money by Serbian security forces, and that
foodstuffs, tractors and other vehicles were set alight at that time. According
to F.G., "one started to pour petrol over everything. H. [a villager] had
to set fire to these things." Having earlier put six men in a line, the
same man who forced H. to set fire to foodstuffs and vehicles then began
to call people from the line. F.G. told Human Rights Watch that the man
"called the first [person] from the line and beat him, although not badly.
The second one-Gazmend [Zeqir Hetemi] was ordered to untie his shoes-they
were kicking him. They beat him very badly. The third one was asked to
take off his clothes and they kicked him. All of this in front of the women
and children."48

A.B who was also present when the beatings occurred,
provided a similar account:

Then they separated six men and started to beat
them up, one by one in a way that I have never seen before. I remember
a young man-who is dead now-one Serb told him to untie his sneakers-he
kicked him in the face and another one kicked him above his head. . . .
I remember another case. They called him too-three police or paramilitaries
tied a machine gun belt around his head in front of his eyes and around
his forehead and started to pull the belt. When they told him to go back
to the line with his hands up, the blood started to flow from his forehead
down his face because his skin was very badly damaged.

Isak Bytqyi was the next person to be shot. The
forty-five-year-old Bytyqi had worked as a policeman in the Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, which likely placed him under greater suspicion
of involvement in the KLA. According to his cousin, A.B., "three or four
Serbs in uniform came. One of them seemed like he was in charge-he was
around forty-five and had a moustache. He called for Isak Bytyqi. . . .
I heard when [Isak] was told "you are commanding these people." I couldn't
hear the rest of the conversation (which went on for about three minutes).
They took him in front of a vehicle and I heard gunshots-I couldn't see
because I was in the upper part of the field.49 Isak's brother S.B. found
his body later the same day. According to S.B., Isak Bytyqi "had been shot
in the back of the head, behind the left ear."50

Following Isak Bytyqi's death, Serbian police and
paramilitaries took the remaining women, children and elderly down the
hill to the lower field, leaving only younger men in the upper field. According
to witnesses, H., who had been ordered earlier to burn the vehicles, was
again called from the line. He was badly beaten and told that he was going
to get "a bullet in the forehead." When he was ordered back to the line,
H. escaped into the bushes, despite being pursued by two paramilitaries
who fired after him. After questioning the men as to H.'s identity, shots
were fired at the other men in the line from lower down the hill, killing
Fatmir Bytyqi, Gazmend (Zeqir) Hatemi, and Heset Lekiqi and wounding a
fourth man. The other men from the village were then told to run into the
woods. According to S.B.: "They told the men who remained there to go deep
into the woods. When we started to run, they began to shoot.51 As shots
rang out, the men scattered into the woods. A.B. described hearing "firing
and branches falling" as he fled, which may have been the result of stray
bullets hitting trees. Those who escaped hid in the woods.

At around 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. the same day, the survivors
returned to the field site, drawn by the cries of women and children and
anxious to know what had become of their families. The villagers began
to search the woods to retrieve the bodies of those who had been killed.
The wounded were carried back and given first aid. In the morning, after
a night sheltering under plastic sheeting and in those vehicles that had
not been burned, the villagers finished collecting the corpses. In addition
to the bodies of fifteen men who had been shot in the field and the woods,
the body of seventy-four-year-old Halime Gerbeshi was also discovered.
Gerbeshi appears to have been burned to death while she was sheltering
under a plastic sheet on a tractor which had been set alight. In order
to bury the bodies quickly, it was decided to prepare a large single temporary
grave. Some from the villagers, including a local politician, attempted
to persuade the villagers otherwise, arguing that it would hamper subsequent
investigations of the deaths. The villagers nevertheless dug a single grave
and prepared a list of the names and ages of the dead (prepared in triplicate
in case one of the persons carrying the list was killed or captured). At
around 1:00 p.m. on April 17, the bodies were buried in a simple funeral
service.

The Slovinje residents hid in the hills for three
more days, before attempting to return to their village. On April 20 or
21, some residents returned to the village. Villagers sheltering in Smolusa
were reportedly invited back to the village around the same time by their
Serb neighbors. Within days of returning, gunshots and the burning of an
Albanian house prompted the Albanian residents of the village to leave
for Smolusa, which throughout this period appears to have been safe, if
overcrowded. It was not without its victims, however: Latife Kryeziu, a
forty-seven-year-old woman who had been wounded in the village on April
15, died of her wounds in Smolusa. The remaining villagers who were sheltering
in the hills also made their way to Smolusa, so that by the end of April,
most of the surviving Albanian inhabitants of Slovinje (and several other
villages) had taken refuge there.

Towards the end of April, some of the villagers
were invited by police to return to Slovinje. The primary motivation for
this invitation was apparently to arrange the reburial of the eighteen
villagers who had been killed by Serbian police and paramilitaries in Slovinje
on April 15. According to H.K., the eighteen corpses initially placed in
a mass grave were dug up by Serbian soldiers and taken to the school in
Slovinje.52 The Albanian villagers were instructed by police to visit the
school to identify and arrange for reburial of their relatives. The official
logic of such an action was presumably to mask the circumstances of the
deaths, albeit one complicated by the involvement of the dead villagers'
relatives. According to Z.G., the bodies were dug up following the visit
of "a doctor from Belgrade."53 Several witnesses interviewed by Human Rights
Watch participated in the reburials, which took place at the end of April.

Almost as soon as the burials had taken place, the
villagers were given an order to leave the village. According to S.B.,
Serbian forces gave the following ultimatum: "Everyone must leave. If we
find anyone here after 6:00 p.m. we're going to kill them."54 Those villagers
who had returned left again for Smolusa, Gadimlje, and Glogovac (Lipljan).
Several of the persons interviewed by Human Rights Watch boarded overcrowded
trains to the Macedonian border outside Lipljan, eventually ending up in
refugee camps in Macedonia. Most of the village did not return until the
withdrawal of Serbian forces and the entry of KFOR in June.

In late May, the seventeen bodies temporarily buried
in a single grave in the Dell of Deme were removed.55 According to unconfirmed
reports, the bodies were removed with a bulldozer by Serbian security forces
and loaded onto a truck on May 25. None of the villagers interviewed by
Human Rights Watch had seen the bodies being bulldozed or loaded onto a
truck, although one villager did reportedly witness the exhumation. During
a visit to the gravesite on July 23, Human Rights Watch observed that the
earth had been disturbed and found clothing fragments that supported the
villagers' accounts. Reports of exhumations by Serbian forces to conceal
the evidence of murders elsewhere in Kosovo also lend support to the account.
What is certain is that the bodies of seventeen residents of Slovinje once
buried in the Dell of Deme are missing, and that the anguish it has caused
their relatives is real.

Most of Slovinje's Albanian inhabitants did not
return until Serbian security forces withdraw in mid-June following KFOR's
entry into Kosovo on June 12. Some elderly residents sheltering in nearby
villages did attempt to return earlier however, with tragic consequences.
On June 3, S.S. and his forty-five-year-old brother Shefki returned to
Slovinje. Early in the morning the two men were stopped by unknown paramilitaries
in the village and taken to the local school, where they were detained
for several hours. While under detention they were questioned and beaten
repeatedly by the paramilitaries and several soldiers. The two brothers
were accused of being NATO informants and asked about the location of a
satellite telephone they allegedly possessed. Their denials were met by
beatings. Shefki, who suffered from a kidney ailment, was beaten so badly
that he died an hour after his release.

S.S. described their detention to Human Rights Watch:

They [paramilitaries] stopped us, checked our pockets
and checked us for weapons. They tied our hands and forced us to get in
the car and took us to the school. We were teachers and the Serbs [from
the village] told them we were spies. Then they began asking us about the
telephone, saying "call NATO to help you." Then they started to torture
us. There were five people-three paramilitaries and two soldiers . . .
My brother and I were in the same place and got beaten at the same time.
Two officers-paramilitaries-were asking the questions. After they left,
the three others came and we were beaten by them. . . . They questioned
us six times and beat us on six occasions. The questioning was longer [than
the beating. We were questioned for] about twenty minutes each time. .
. . The three of them all beat us at the same time.56

The two men were detained until around 11:45 a.m.,
when it apparently became clear that Shefki was close to death as a result
of his beatings. According to S.S. "When they saw my brother was dying,
they said `Leave now! Go! Go away!'"57 The brothers then left the school
on foot and headed towards their home in the village. S.S. continued, "we
were walking on the road when my brother died. I went to the neighbor's
and told them what happened. We took his body into a neighbors garden.
He died an hour after [we were released]-we were walking very slowly toward
my house. It was 12:30 p.m. when he died-it took us an hour to walk [from
the school]."58 When asked the cause of Shefki's death, S.S. replied, "
My brother died because they beat him so much in the kidneys."59

Shefki collapsed and died outside the home of P.F.
As a result, P.F. was the first person other than S.S. to see Shefki's
body. He told Human Rights Watch that on June 3 at around 1:00 or 2:00
p.m., "I was in this [location of interview] house with my daughter and
I saw S. in my garden, yelling `Oh my God they killed my brother.' I took
some wood and a small wagon and went to the place [where the body lay].
I took the body and went to the village cemetery where my brother was and
buried the body there. . . . S. stayed here because he was wounded."60
When asked to describe the condition of the body P.F. stated "when I saw
the body it had some wounds. [There were] bruises on the side of the cheek
and on the side of the his body. I could see bruises all over his body-on
his legs. There was no blood."61

Several days later P.F. himself was detained in
the school, following the killing of a policeman. During his detention,
he was pressured into making a false confession that he had killed the
man he helped to bury. According to P.F.:

The military came and took me to the school at around
11:00 a.m. They were wearing long boots, uniforms and bullet proof vests.
They asked me who killed Shefki. I answered "the police and the military."
In the end, I had to admit that I killed him, even though I didn't [kill
him]. They wanted to scare me. They took their knives [out] . . . [One
of them] threatened me, saying "I will kill your brother and your daughter
if you don't show where in the mountains the people are [hiding]." I said
"I don't know anything."62

P.F. was also questioned about the KLA. He alleges
that two Serb civilians from the village were present at the school during
his detention, and that his head was pushed against a wall although he
was not beaten. Human Rights Watch observed a cut on P.F.'s head that was
consistent with the latter allegation. Although the soldiers who questioned
him managed to force P.F. to admit that he had killed Shefki, they were
unable to get him to sign a confession before police arrived at the school
and ordered P.F. released.

S.S. was taken to the hills by a KLA doctor for
treatment, returning the following day. Almost three weeks after his beating,
Human Rights Watch saw faded bruising and skin damage all over S.S.'s body
consistent with his account of the beating. The remainder of his family
returned to the village unharmed on June 9.63

Perpetrators

Witnesses from
Slovinje describe three kinds of forces active in the village and surrounding
areas between April and June-police, military, and paramilitary.64 The
military appear to have played a much less active role in the expulsion
and murder of civilians than police and paramilitaries. By contrast the
police and paramilitaries are frequently implicated by witnesses. There
is some confusion among witnesses between police and paramilitaries, possibly
related to the allegation that local Serbs from Slovinje put on police
uniforms to participate in the violence.

As always, identification of perpetrators proved
difficult for witnesses. Nine Serbs from Slovinje were named by various
witnesses as participants in killings, forcible expulsion and arson in
the village, but Human Rights Watch was unable to confirm their participation.
Several police officers were named by multiple witnesses from Slovinje,
however. Mr. Tosic (first name unknown), a police commander from Lipljan,
was identified by four witnesses as present in Slovinje during the atrocities
on April 16 and 17. Although individual witnesses from Slovinje and the
village of Toplicane allege that Tosic was variously involved in acts of
arson and ordering civilians to leave Slovinje, another witness, D.N. who
described Tosic as "a person in charge," told Human Rights Watch that he
had intervened to save her husband from execution by paramilitaries on
April 16.65 Milivoje Pejic, the deputy police chief in Janjevo, was named
by four witnesses as a commander in Slovinje at the time of the April 16
killings. A third police officer from Slovinje, identified as "Tomce, the
son of Milic," was named by two witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch
as present in the village in April and May.